Faoladh
by Nycticorax
Summary: Faoladh is the Irish legend of the werewolf, in these legends they are the protectors of children, healers, and guides to the lost. Cannon takes place in Scotland for the most part, but who is to say Lupin isn't from Ireland? Not a childhood story. Slow updating. This has been bouncing around in my head for a few years and it's the second time I'v tried to write it down.


18:20 pm October 13, 1981

The Alleyway

The street lights flickered as they came on, shedding minimal light into the alley just off the street. All that could be seen was the dirt path the neighborhood kids cut though to get away from school quickly, or occasionally when they were running late. The old board fence that lined the alley was in need of a coat of paint and the dirt running along it, a good dose of weed killer. But it was perfectly ordinary.

Now about this time an old cat came walking along said fence. She was a perfectly ordinary cat, no name and she didn't think of herself as "just cat". She was a cat, and any good self-respecting cat did not suddenly gain self-consciousness just for the purpose of an old gimmick. Never the less, she was a very old cat. An old cat that had lived on the streets a very long time and old cats that have lived on the streets a very long time have instincts. Instincts that were at this very moment screaming at the old cat to hide, and fast!

As the cat sprinted deeper into the aforementioned alleyway, a light grey car slowly rolled down the adjacent street.

Old cats tend not to be all that curious, and can even be downright jumpy.

A few minutes past before the cat dared to venture out of its hiding place in the shadows of the alley. Slowly stalking forward, the cat happens to startle its self a mouse out of one of the clumps of grass. The mouse runs the cat gives chase, such is the circle of life. Meanwhile the young lady that drove the car, and earlier put fear for its remaining 4 lives in the heart of that particular cat, was currently walking down the street almost upon the alley. The cat, which had retreated back to the alley that was quickly becoming its base of operations on this night, was enjoying its late dinner. She ate with the highest standard of cat manners, namely rather messily. The young lady passed the corner of the alley and glanced in. Seeing the back half of a mouse hanging from the maw of a wild animal, that was currently appearing to take great pleasure in rending said mouse into pieces, the young lady did what any delicate impressionable youth would do in her situation. She screamed.

…..

AN/ Now that I've lost all those with attention spans that can't last past four hundred words, here is for you dearest reader the actual story. A true jewel of the internet if I do say so myself, and as the author I think I'm entitled to say that. . . At least I think I'm entitled to say that. That`s the problem with fanfiction, if you don't own anything how do you know what you're entitled to? In case anyone missed that clever little device in the last line, I don't own anything. Except maybe that cat in the last chapter. Enjoy.

…..

18:30 pm October 13, 1981

The Alleyway

A scream pierced the night before fading into the distance. The only noise heard for the next few seconds was that of a stiff breeze before a cat suddenly jumped out of a nearby alleyway, running at a full tilt. It reached the center of the street before freezing, every hair standing on end. The cat let out a low yowl as it slowly turned its head to look back at the alley. Suddenly it took off again, faster than before if that were possible.

Silence rained for half a beat as a cloud drifted between the stars and the alley, bathing it in deeper shadow than before. There was a quiet hiss of displaced air before the cloud cover receded, and as it did a man stepped out of the alley and began walking down the street with a sure stride. He was handsome, dark brown hair combed back to reveal his sharp aristocratic features. His strong jaw and cheek bones would have been the defining features on any other man. With this one however, the first thing you would notice were the eyes. It wasn't the unusual shape as with some of the foreigners you see around town these days. It wasn't the intensity that his soul peered out into the world with either, though that was certainly there. No, the distinctive trait on this man's otherwise perfectly ordinary and pleasant face were his bright red eyes.

He continued down the street, strolling now as he stopped occasionally to look at the numbers on the houses. Three houses later and by the slight gentle smile that appeared on his face, he had found what he was looking for. He back tracked a bit to stand directly between houses 11 and 15. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath he opened them again, only this time he was looking at the front walkway of number 13. Opening the gate and taking a step forward, he was immediately pushed back with a bright flash of orange and pink light. Cursing under his breath as he noticed lights coming on in the house before him, he quickly pulled a thin wooden rod out of his sleeve and began carefully writing a series of Nordic runes on the air with in a harsh gray, as he did a bubble of the same orange and pink light as before began to form around the house, slowly becoming more visible as his sequence neared completion. Yelling could now be heard from inside the house, it grew more frantic as the bubble popped.

Stalking forward again, the man quickly made his way through the front door, only to be confronted with the first obstacle to his goal, namely the goals father. The man made a quick attempt to reason with the father, the father did not seem to be in a reasoning frame of mind. He chose to respond to the presented arguments with a barrage of lethal jinxes and hexes. There wasn't anything particularly inspired in the mix and the man, almost casually, flicked aside each charm with contemptuous ease off the tip of his wand before a bone breaker hex was reflected back on the father. His skull did not survive contact. Sighing wearily the man hurriedly made for the stair case and his goal for the night's excursion.

Upon reaching the top he was only just able to just make out the yellow flash of a departing portkey through the doorway. Stepping through the doorway, his rage at his target escaping was only amplified by the determination on the mothers face as she turned to face him an incantation already on her lips.

"Ava-," she started.

"Fool!" he screamed in return, before appearating away as a much louder pop resounded with his hasty departure.

After all, only in the logic of wizards and the excessively paranoid would think to put a second layer of wards under a Fidelius charm, but only Lord Voldemort would think to look for a third layer while taking down the second.

Four minutes after the dark lord's departure, a very insane Alice Longbottom stumbled out of what was once her home, the alchemic dark grey and royal blue madness mist dissipating into the ground as she took a last few stuttered steps before sinking into oblivion.

…..

18:40 pm October 13, 1981

Godric's Hollow

There was another man out and about that night, he was taller than the dark lord, and in fact he was taller than most men. At 208 cm he was almost a head taller than most of his fellow Englishmen, not that he particularly considered himself English, or even a man for that matter. As a rule, he much preferred to think of himself as a wolf. People were afraid of wolves and Mr. Greyback had never had the respect of his peers, he was always too impulsive (he thought of it as listening to his instincts) too mean spirited (he blamed his wolf being close to the surface) and just too smelly (the wolf doesn't bathe so why should he?). If no one would respect him then he decided that they should fear him.

And fear him they did, for nearly a decade and a half now he was personally responsible for almost three fourths of those turned in any given year. He was very much hunted, they had almost caught up to him to. Right before he caught the attention of that new dark lord. Three years now he had been fighting for his dark lord, a foot soldier in his forces, trampled on by any old pureblood that happened to be around. Oh how he'd love to infect them all, watch them suffer as their precious society they just have to maintain rejects them.

But tonight he had his opportunity to rise! A mission strait from the dark lord, all he had to do was attack a few people, this Potter couple and their kid. He would finally rise through the ranks and gain the dark lords trust. Now, if only he could find the house, where did that rat of a spy say again? Something about where the potters live... he looked up at the conveniently placed street sign. "The Potters live at Godric's Hollow," he gleefully exclaimed as a house appeared. Looking over his shoulder he could just see the moon peeking over the tree line, the pain and fire of the change he had experienced hundreds of times before began to spread through his veins, he smiled and started walking up the pathway towards the house before his vision began to blur.

…

There was so much anger. The wolf didn't understand that the anger its host felt was directed at the world. So when it woke up once a month, it was just angry at the things it could sense. The first thing it smelled when it woke up this time was a man and a woman with a cub, so it attacked. The man had opened up a big gash on its side with one of the bright fangs that fly it had seen before, though it had never been hit before. The pain only enraged the wolf further, the man died very quickly after that.

The woman had only made it halfway up the stairs before the wolf was on her, she threw the child the rest of the way up before she hit the ground and started wailing her arms. While werewolves are normally very magically resistant, indeed the curse has to reside in the soul to avoid being eradicated by the infections magical resistance while the infection itself resides in the blood, on this night the wolf was not having too much luck with that concept. It may have been the blood loss, or Lilly Potters accidentally putting too much power into her blunt force jinx, it may have been a combination of factors we don't even know about but her little school yard punching jinx delivered at point blank range managed to dislocate the jaw of the wolf.

This enraged it even further. With its jaw out of commission the wolf used its claws to scratch out her throat as the two rolled down the stairs before coming to a halt. The woman's halt was final. But the heavily injured werewolf's rage was not yet spent and its pain kept it focused, and then that annoying pouting up stairs started to get louder.

Heaving its broken body up the stairs, the wolf could only think of ending the annoying sound, its rage was driven further for every second that the pitiful sound continued. Reaching the top of the stairs, it observed the weak form of its rages target lying on its back in the thick carpet. The wolf only managed two lumbering steps forward before it passed out from blood loss.

…

Now there are three ways to contract lycanthropy, the first and most common is of course the bite via exposure to the wolf's saliva. Because the infection resides in the blood it has been hypothesized that the expansion of the wolves teeth deposits trace amounts of blood in the saliva causing it to become a carrier to the infection for the duration of the transformation. The theory is supported by the hand full of cases where a humans have been bitten or otherwise exposed to the saliva of a non-transformed werewolf and not had the full extent of lycanthropy afflicted upon them. The second is the exchange of reproductive fluids with a transformed werewolf, don't ask, you don't want to know, I still wish I didn't. The final and perhaps most dangerous of the three is direct exposure to a werewolf's blood. This final method of transference is possible at all times, in any phase of the moon, and with old blood or new. Fortunately, the blood can simply be washed of skin or out of the eyes and spat out of the mouth. The infection only occurs when the blood of a werewolf is in direct contact with the blood of a new living host.

The young Mr. Potters mother had not thrown him very far from the top of the stairway. He had broken his arm when he landed, the bone was sticking out. His blood was exposed. When the wolf fell it landed not eight centimeters from Mr. Potter. It's already dislocated jaw which was hanging open was torn back by the force of nearly 28 stone worth of descending werewolf. The cheek was torn and the blood splattered over the exposed arm.

Mr. Potter received the first and the only infection in his life.

Harry screamed.

…..

Sometime…

Somewhere… Else

Lady Luck woke up from her nap when something tried to get her attention, but in her moment of grogginess she missed it. She knew that somewhere there had been a series of events that was just too unlikely to have let happened if she had been paying attention. But she hadn't, and now if she wanted to fix it she would have to endure another lecture from Father Time about being ever watchful. Seriously! You'd think the master of time and space would schedule a little time for a break every now and then but no! It was just too much of a bother so she let it slide.

Fate cackled evilly from down the hallway as she put the bottle of Drought of Living Death back into her satchel and removed her breathing mask. The smell alone had been enough to knock Luck out for almost an hour after all. You couldn't be too careful with something like that. Now to go remind Father Time of the start of WW3 again. After he gave her another lecture there was no way in the 26-dimensional-alternate-corner-of-theta-space they existed in that Lady Luck would tell him she fell asleep on watch again.

…..

19:08 pm October 13, 1981

Godric's Hollow

The Dark Lord appearated directly in front of the Potters house, now that he had lost the first target and his plan to destroy the second seamed rather short sighted. It had taken an hour he didn't have to track down the rat for the appearation coordinates, the entire time he had chided himself for not getting them when he had been told the location of the hidden house. Hopefully the stupid wolf had managed not to kill the targets yet, the only thing he was good for was the threat of locking prisoners in with him during the full moon, he was nearly useless the rest of the month.

Passing through the front door he noted that he had set off a detection ward, it hadn't gone off earlier because the beast had elected to enter through the window. Following the short path of carnage that used to be a man and stepping over the body of a dead woman, the Dark Lord followed the bloody trail up the staircase. He vanished the dead body of the werewolf to avoid the hassle of having to move it.

He had no idea the chaos that would cause.

Stepping closer to the child he widened his eyes in surprise, what he saw fascinated him. A freshly turned werewolf was a very rare thing to witness when not from a first had perspective, and the dark lord had gotten where he was in life by knowing things no one else bothered to after all. Watching the child wither around on the carpet as his veins occasionally flickered as magic flowed through them resisting the spread of disease, Voldemort knelt down next to the child and extended his wand to run a few diagnostic charms.

Magic is all about intent, the intent of the dark lord at this time was to know what was happening within the child. The child's intent was to push the fire that was running through his veins OUT! So when Mr. Potter desperately clinging to his last shred of humanity, grabbed a hold of the end of a wand that so closely matched that which would have been his own if he had remained human, the curse took its chance to spread.

Harry pushed part of the curse OUT, Voldemort wanted to KNOW, The curse let him EXPERIENCE. The dark lord did not have the benefit of a magically resistant infection to limit the curse to his soul, the curse decided to spread throughout his flesh as well. The curse that caused the pain of fire when exposed to the light of the full moon did a little more than cause pain without the magically resistant infection to counter it.

The body of the dark lord, kept young beautiful and of course, many times more magically powerful than normal, through the use of sacrificial rituals, was incinerated in seconds from the onslaught of the curse. The curse, after flowing though the soul to get to the body rather than using the soul as a barrier between it and the body, found it could still hold on to the soul, so it did.

Through pushing some of the curse out the pain Harry was feeling lessened somewhat. After over an hour of fighting it, the sudden lessening of the pain was blissful to him and his magic relaxed, the infection, not meeting any resistance, finished spreading and then focused on healing its host so that it could pull him into the correct form for this time of night.

A few minutes later and the only evidence that Voldemort had ever been there was a charred bit of wood next to a werewolf pup.

…

Hagrid came up the stairs slowly, wary of the werewolf that could still be in the area, his eyes leaking tears for his lost friends. He had just found the sleeping cub next to a thoroughly chewed up stick when he heard a motorcycle engine in the distance.


End file.
